Mats Hummels at AS Rome: Critics and doubts predominate

Mats Hummels has now arrived at the bottom in Rome. And it certainly doesn’t feel good. The brutality of the football world in the Italian capital knows hardly any boundaries and hardly pity, which is why the Corriere dello Sport On Monday, a few scattered whistles made a headline again: on Sunday evening in the Stadio Olimpico, in the home game against Cagliari, Hummels hadn’t even played. However, according to ear witnesses, the Tifosi are said to have clearly acoustically stored their resentment towards Hummels when warm -up and the stadium announcements. They seem to have made their judgment, now, in mid -March: the vote is negative.

It is currently being reported in Italian media about the soon end of the short time of the Mats Hummel, who has only been playing football in Rome for six months, even if he has experienced more altitude and depths in this six months than others in all of her career. He would no longer play a game, wrote Tuttosportdie Gazzetta dello Sport attested to him that he “broke everything”, and some contributions on social media could be printed in lexicons for Italian swear words, a whistle in the stadium looks like mild criticism in comparison.

This wave of criticism is due to last Thursday, the crime scene was the Estadio San Mamés in Bilbao, it ran the eleventh minute. Hummels played a catastrophic cross pass on the center line, which was supposed to be punished at the level of a European League round of 16, but perhaps not with an even so humiliating chain from events: Hummels grown to save, but slipped into the opponent. Referee Clement Turpin showed him a strict red card, the Roma lost 1: 3, resigned from the competition. And Hummels only had one request for forgiveness: with the team, on Instagram, with the few scattered followers at Rome Airport late at night, everywhere Hummels apologized. Alone: ​​The Sorrys and Scusis got less attention than the voices of the critics, which were already enough.

Hummels has rarely been felt for various reasons since his arrival in Rome. Only because the whole club fell into a deep crisis that started that coach Daniele de Rossi, who had brought Hummels, was immediately released. However, the crisis became more and more existential in October when the fans no longer came to the stadium, but protested frustrated from home against club management and team. The fact that the then coach Ivan Juric completely waived the German was more of a small secondary location in a large drama, which also applied to the reversal of events.

Hummels publishes an ironic Instagram post, but most followers don’t read the humor out

Claudio Ranieri, who is worshiped in Rome as so sacred that they could end up namely a hill after him, rewritten the whole drama into a comeback saga. She is about a team that can play football and who suddenly fights for a European Cup starting area again after six victories in the league after six victories. However, the fact that Hummel’s decisive part, which is apparently very popular in the team, also had a guaranteed regular staff in the team and was praised by Ranieri into the sky, again, a secondary location.

While the Roma standed out from the depths of the league, a derby against Lazio won and survived the group phase in the Europa League, Hummels did not develop the defense chief’s reputation, but that of a vacationer. In public perception, his Instagram posts were understood as that of a player who enjoys his time in Rome, even if he does not play. “The Oscar for the longest vacation is on …”, he wrote there in early March under a photo of the bank of the Tiber, and shortly before he had only sat on the bench against Venice. The irony, however, did not read most of the post in Rome, the city press ran storm. The Roman Ranieri defended him with a public indication that Hummels was at home in the most beautiful city in the world and could do what he wanted. But in truth, the debate about the holiday photos and the seriousness with which Hummels lives out his athlete’s existence in Rome, the basis for his failure in Bilbao. One could say: First Hummels played a bad pass on social media, then one in the stadium.

“Maybe it would have been better to stay on vacation”, so it is now ruined over the memes with the photo of the Tiberufer, Hummels’ Ruf in Rome. In contrast to autumn, however, there is hardly an opportunity for him to climb back to the hero: a derby is still being played, there are no more titles to win, the successes in the league are rightly regarded as the work of the great coach – who will ultimately make the decision whether and how it could go on with Hummels.

The squad planning for the coming season is in the hands of Ranieri, who in autumn, as a big fan of his experienced defender, was that some believed that Hummels in Rome could still be a nice love story. However, there is no trace of romance in March, the whistles and memes are just as testimony as the doubts about the football quality, which Ranieri now also expresses. And Hummels himself don’t hide his uncertainty either. When asked about his future in Rome, he recently replied with the same phrase with which he met the topic through all the ups and downs of the season: “We will see.”